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Ancient Sumerian statuette of two gala priests, dating to c. 2450 BC, found in the temple of Inanna at Mari. The Gala (Sumerian: 𒍑𒆪, romanized: gala, Akkadian: kalû) were priests of the Sumerian goddess Inanna. They made up a significant number of the personnel of both temples and palaces, the central institutions of Mesopotamian city ...
Ancient Sumerian statuette of two gala priests, dating to c. 2450 BCE, found in the temple of Inanna at Mari. Gwendolyn Leick assumes that during the Pre-Sargonic era, the cult of Inanna was rather limited, [34] though other experts argue that she was already the most prominent deity in Uruk and a number of other political centers in the Uruk ...
As a literary genre, the balag was written in the cuneiform script and sung by the Gala priest in a dialect of Sumerian called Emesal (𒅴𒊩 eme-sal). [8] [9] Each balag is composed for a particular god. [7] The precursor to the balag was the City Lament, a type of prayer that was recited when temples were destroyed and rebuilt. [7]
Sumerian religion was the religion practiced by the people of Sumer, the first literate civilization found in recorded history and based in ancient Mesopotamia, and what is modern day Iraq. The Sumerians widely regarded their divinities as responsible for all matters pertaining to the natural and social orders of their society.
While the gala and šahtarili were both musicians and priests, they were not identical. The Sumerian gala priests were often associated with a third gender category, whereas the šahtarili were typically men; furthermore, there was no Hatti counterpart to Ištar — the two types of priests were involved in the worship of two distinct pantheons ...
En (Borger 2003 nr. 164 ; U+12097 𒂗, see also Ensí) is the Sumerian cuneiform for 'lord/lady' or 'priest[ess]'. Originally, it seems to have been used to designate a high priest or priestess of a Sumerian city-state's patron-deity [2] – a position that entailed political power as well.
In ancient Mesopotamia, worship of the goddess Inanna included "soothing laments" sung by third-gender priests called "gala". [n 2] According to First Babylonian dynastic texts, these priests were created specifically for this purpose by the god Enki.
[304] [305] During Sumerian times, a set of priests known as gala worked in Inanna's temples, where they performed elegies and lamentations. [304] Men who became gala sometimes adopted female names and their songs were composed in the Sumerian eme-sal dialect, which, in literary texts, is normally reserved for the speech of female characters.